OUCH! Hard data proves that the recent Digg algo change had a HUGE impact on the chances of getting a story to go hot, and that impact justifies the initial outrage that ensued. Totally great to see actual numbers for things like this.5 Comments

First of all, the Digg revolt during the algo change was because Digg power users were not seeing their stuff on the frontpage as regularly, so they kicked up a fuss. I thought it was way exaggerated and kinda whiny. The large majority of Digg welcomed the changes, as seen in some digg frontpage stories which dissed the top diggers. So I dont see how this post on promotion rate justifies the outrage, especially when they only came from a small amount of active users who already knew they were being penalized. In any case, the algo seems to have evened itself for most power users. The data is also not very well outlined in this post. For example, results pre announcement and results post announcement..... whats the time frame used for the figures shown?

DoshDosh,Thanks for the comments. There are two things:1. I forgot to include information about the data. I updated the post with the date spans. Apologies for the oversight.2. I make the same point as you do about the outrage. I say it was justified as the power users foresaw a significant change, and the numbers say that yes there was a significant change. Whether the power users were right or wrong, or whether Digg is any better after this change is another question completely, and my numbers cannot answer that. These questions and this conclusion are made in the last paragraph in my post.Pierre

Submissions that do get promoted are now seeing a lot more tafffic as a result of this. I think they put things back to the way they were a few weeks ago and now they have gone back to not promoting as many. I am certainly finding it a lot more difficult to get stuff on the frontpage, but I have been since christmas.

Digg is interesting, but for small businesses its very hard to leverage Digg successfully. Its a Meatball Sundae for them, as Seth Godin puts it.Im liking Sphinn much better. As I have started exploring Sphinn more this weekend (while snowed in, in Cleveland), I find it a much better source of business-related information.